Colorado: Day 2

As predicted, the weather today was indeed sketchy. Del and I went for a run around noon, but not before he spent a good 10 minutes scraping his car windows. The plan was to follow the trail up Boulder Canyon and get in 5-6 miles. It was below freezing and it was intermittently spitting snow, sleet, and "other". The pavement was slick, so we ran in the dirt whenever possible. After a few miles, we hit a section that had apparently been in the shade all winter and was frozen solid. Then the trail more or less ended, so we just ran along the road.

I need to say something about the town of Boulder. It is a severe understatement to state that this is a "pedestrian friendly town". Cars will come to a screeching halt if you are anywhere near a crosswalk. Bikes pretty much always have the right-of-way. There are "power-trip crosswalks", as Delaware calls them, where you press the button and cars immediately get the signal to stop. It's refreshing to live in a town where such a large majority of the inhabitants spend at least some of their time being pedestrians, either on foot or on wheels. This gives them a heightened awareness and appreciation of other walkers/runners/cyclists when they are driving their cars.

So, there we are running on the shoulder of a two-lane, twisty-turny highway that winds through Boulder Canyon. As the cars approach, my mind prepares to tell my body to dive into the bushes in the event that a car buzzes us uncomfortably close. This doesn't happen. Every single car that passes us slows down and moves over, giving us more room than we actually need, just to be safe. Nobody honks at us. Nobody yells profanities out the window or tells us to "get the f#ck off the damn road".

This is NOT the Midwest.

As we approach the halfway point for a 5-6 mile run, we spy a trail. We didn't know where it went, but we could only tell that it went "up". Steeply. Keep in mind, we had already been going uphill for the entirety of the run up to this point. Why not do a little exploring and turnaround after another half mile or so?

So we went up. And up. And up some more. I have to say that Del is a monster and was running up these 30-40 degree inclines. I ran some of it, but walked quite a bit. We passed 4 miles and realized that we were almost at the top of something, so why the hell not keep following the trail? The trail met up with a road and we decided that it seemed like an agreeable point to head back down the way we had come. The descent was exhilarating! Del and I flew down and were back to the road in no time. The stretch back to the car was downhill the whole way, but I was tired and still had difficulty keeping pace with Delaware. We ended our "5-6 mile run" at close to 9 miles. Oh well....planning is for the poor.

One thing that was made clear to me today is this: If you want to become "hard" like so many other Boulder-based athletes...you do stuff like this constantly. You find monstrous hills and you run up them. If I lived here, this would easily be a go-to route for me.

This is the elevation profile for today's run. Yes, it looks like a tit. I giggled too. 4 more days of this, and then I'm back to Kansas City...land of oxygen-rich air and angry motorists.